127th Rose Parade

Happy New Year everybody!

Perhaps I will reflect more on 2015 when I have time to do it, but I worked last night on another project for 3 more hours after a 19 hour day and I got about 5 hours of sleep, and here I am working again.

The Rose Parade is much nicer and less commercial (though still pretty commercial) than the Macy’s Ballon Parade, so much so I recently erased my 5 year collection of the Thanksgiving Parade from my DVR.

This year’s theme is “Find Your Adventure” and the Grand Marshall is Ken (Civil War) Burns, documentary film maker. If you like zooming around old photographs he’s your guy.

Of course the unique feature of the Rose Parade is that the floats must be entirely covered in flowers, plants, or plant by products (like seeds and bark). Many are highly animated and all structural and mechanical moving elements must be likewise covered. I’m told they’re spectacular in person in a way that doesn’t come across on TV because you lose the sense of scale and some are quite large indeed.

Preparing them takes weeks which makes preserving the plants an issue. A team of judges reviewed them early this morning and they select 24 as worthy of trophies and awards.

Now that may seem rather a lot until you realize there are 42 Floats (more than there are Balloons at Macy’s). Now there are a few groups that still ‘roll their own’ using volunteers but most of the Floats are designed and built by 2 professional firms, Fiesta Parade Floats and Phoenix Decorating Company.

Never forget that 42 is the answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything (also, what is 6 x 7?).

There are also 18 musical units (Marching Bands). Some are local but for many schools save for over a year for the big trip to warmer climes and Disneyland. It’s not cheap, north of $5,000 per member in many cases.

Also the Stanford and Iowa Marching Bands.

Another unusual feature (though not unique) of the Rose Parade is the Equestrian Units. Pasadena is in the middle of California Horse country and they are actually the oldest units in the parade. This year we have 19 of them.

The parade actually takes over 5 hours to run but the broadcast is only 2 and the cameras are near the start so you get a chance to see them before parts start falling off. It is on NBC starting at 11 am ET (8 am PT). All units are listed alphabetically, not in the order they will appear.

I hope your New Year is Healthy, Enjoyable, and Profitable. Best wishes, The Stars Hollow Gazette and DocuDharma.